TPP nations agree to pursue trade deal without US

by Dramelin 9:30 PM 0 comments

In a pushback against the Trump administration`s protectionist rhetoric, 11 nations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal have agreed on Sunday to proceed without the U.
The 11 nations met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting for trade ministers in Hanoi and agreed to assess options to bring the deal into force "expeditiously.
" "These efforts would address our concern about protectionism, contribute to maintaining open markets, strengthening the rules-based international trading system, increasing world trade, and raising living standards," the group said in a ministerial statement on Sunday.
TPP had been considered all but dead after U.
President Donald Trump pulled the U.
out of the pact, a broad 12-nation trade deal, which he claimed was a "disaster" that would hurt U.
Although Japan`s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had initially said that the TPP would be "meaningless" without the U.
, more recently, Japanese officials had begun to second Australia`s calls to proceed without the U.
Japan, for one, had expended a lot of political capital to push toward reforms needed to be a part of the deal and other countries also hadn`t wanted to walk away from years of work negotiating the pact.
Com`s Leslie Shaffer; Follow her on Twitter @LeslieShaffer1 Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.